Friday, July 15, 2011

Fact-Checking Loesch's Response to Alex Pareene

Dana Loesch likes to pretend she's an "expert" on the Gladney story because it happened in St. Louis. She actually knows very little about it, and has from the beginning simply relied on other tea partiers like 24th State and Gateway Pundit to give her talking points on the subject.

Can Pareene explain to me how the video of the incident begins with Gladney on the ground as SEIU members stand over him? In fact, can any progressive explain this? They act as though a much-smaller Gladney attacked the SEIU members’ feet with his head.

Actually, here's a clip from 2 seconds into the video showing Gladney standing menacingly above Elston McCowan, one of the SEIU members Loesch accuses of assault, as McCowan is lying on the pavement:Now it's true that at the very beginning of the video, both McCowan and Gladney are on the ground. However, it's not true that "SEIU thugs" are standing over Gladney. The people immediately around Gladney (other than McCowan laying on the ground) are John Mirelli and Sandra Himes, both tea partiers. Furthermore, since I was at the trial, and Loesch was not (and hence has no idea what she's even criticizing), I can tell you that the defense witnesses all explained that McCowan and Gladney were scuffling and fell to the ground. On the other hand, absolutely none of the prosecution's witnesses could explain why the video starts with McCowan laying on the ground, even though they were all standing right by him as the video starts. In fact, Gladney had previously told Fox News that McCowan had "laid himself on the ground" and was faking an injury:

But the problem with Gladney's story was that medical reports from that night and x-rays showed that McCowan had dislocated his shoulder and, in fact, even fractured a bone. On the other hand, Gladney didn't even have any medical records that were worth showing in court (24th State says the big evidence was that he was given "pain pills").

Loesch then criticized Pareene for saying that Gladney didn't have insurance:

Pareene here demonstrates a classic example of more zeal than knowledge. He wanted to write something nasty about this case more than he wanted to sound knowledgeable about it. Gladney was insured, in fact, through his wife’s employer. I’m sure Pareene didn’t bother checking Gladney’s medical records with the hospital either to see the extent of Gladney’s injuries, as other bloggers have done, since he couldn’t bother to verify whether or not Gladney was insured.

Now, it's true that Gladney did turn out to have insurance. But what Loesch fails to mention is that the reason people initially thought Gladney didn't have insurance is because Gladney and tea partiers told reporters Gladney didn't have insurance. Here's St. Louis Tea Party founder Bill Hennessy asking for donations for medical expenses at the tea party's first Gladney rally (the one with Gladney in a wheelchair).

So yeah, the tea party first claimed Gladney didn't have insurance in order to generate more sympathy for him and raise cash for him, but then turned around and accused reporters of being "liars" when the irony of someone not have insurance was pointed out. As for Loesch's claim that "some bloggers" got medical records from the hospital, she probably shouldn't be talking about that, since she was previously thoroughly embarrassed on the subject.

After Pareene mocked the fact that conservatives complain about "ambulance-chasing" but seemed OK with Gladney's stunts, Loesch said the following:

Gladney wore a neck brace to the trial because he just had spinal surgery

Yeah, except that KMOX told them that Gladney said it was because of the fight:

Gladney had testified that he underwent recent neck surgery not related to the August 2009 fight. Later, outside the court, Gladney told a reporter he belived his neck problems were the result of “blunt trauma” he suffered in the fight.

Whoops! Sounds like another failed prop!

Pareene also laughed at Loesch and Breitbart's allegations of a Grand Conspiracy at work behind the jury's decision:

Apparently SEIU and Media Matters for America and George Soros and the Tides Foundation and Eric Boehlert and the city of Montclair, N.J., acting on orders from the White House, all used their wizard powers to convince a jury in St. Louis that Kennedy Gladney was not actually assaulted. And that is how the vast left-wing conspiracy works.

Loesch responded with the following:

Actually, that wasn’t the point at all, but again, I don’t expect someone who doesn’t know he should verify information before he prints it to possess the reading comprehension required to understand the intent.

But, actually, that was the point, as Breitbart's tweets made clear:Breitbart was insanely suggesting that Eric Boehlert had somehow tampered with the "justice system." Could you get any more idiotic than that? I mean, other than Dana Loesch's blog posts.

Given the enormous amout of bullshit that the righwing has dropped into the Gladney Affair I half suspect we'll see more on the issue of Gladney's ostensible medical records.

non-raving-rightwinger: If other bloggers have checked Gladney's medical records where are their posts on concrete evidence of Gladney's injuries?

raving-rightwinger: These are CONFIDENTIAL medical records.How dare you demand that people violate medical confidentiality? Does your authoritarianism know no bounds? If there no part of big government that you oppose? Why are you libtards and libloons demanding that people's most sacred personal information be sent all over the Internet?

If the medical records were part of the case, they likely became public records unless they were portions that were sealed by the court. So it could be a privacy issue or it could be an issue of a lazy blogger/journalist not bothering to do any work.

About St. Louis Activist Hub

The St. Louis Activist Hub blog is the home of weekly event listings for progressive activism across St. Louis. It is also a group blog where a variety of St. Louis viewpoints are presented. You can follow the Activist Hub on Twitter and join the Facebook group for further ways to stay connected.